Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

That pernicious sentiment, "Our country, right or wrong."

Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.

Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.